Bose says it will fight the 'inflammatory, misleading' accusations claiming it wiretaps its headphone users

Bose responded on Friday to a proposed class-action lawsuit filed
earlier in the week that accused the headphone giant of secretly
collecting and sharing what some of its headphone and speaker
users listen to.

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Bose said in a statement that it would fight the
accusations, which it called "inflammatory" and "misleading."

"Nothing is more important to us than your trust," the company
wrote. "We work tirelessly to earn and keep it, and have for over
50 years. That's never changed, and it never will."

The accusations come from an Illinois man named Kyle Zak and
Edelson PC, a Chicago-based law firm that focuses on cases
involving consumer technology and privacy. They center on
Bose's Connect app, an optional companion app
that can tweak settings for various Bose headphones and Bluetooth
speakers, including the often-recommended QuietComfort 35
noise-cancelling headphones.

Zak has accused Bose of using the Connect app to intercept the
titles and listening info for every audio file that users listen
to, then sharing that info with third parties without users'
permission. Zak claims that this violates the federal Wiretap Act
on the grounds that Bose could tie that listening metadata to a
product's serial number and a user's personal information.

Bose's privacy policies are generally open about
sharing "de-identified and aggregated information about [its]
customers" with advertisers and other third parties, but the
company is adamant that nothing it shares could be used to
personally identify its users.

"In the Bose Connect App, we don't wiretap your communications,
we don't sell your information, and we don't use anything we
collect to identify you - or anyone else - by name," Bose wrote
in the statement. "If there's anything else we think you should
know, you'll hear it straight from us."

The complaint is seeking an unspecified amount in financial
damages. According to Forbes, Bose - a privately held
company - had annual revenues of $3.5 billion in 2015.